Aslam

MAN'S ULTIMATE END: God says : Then He will take his life and place him in grave. Thereafter He will raise him when He likes. In other words. He will rob him of all his powers — power of speech, power of seeing, power of hearing, power of smell, power of knowledge. These things become non-existent like their first condi tions. Nothing remains in him after his death. His body becomes a corpse from which obnoxious smell comes out just like his original matter-semen. His bones are crushed and his flesh becomes the food of worms and insects. So the best way for him is to become dust with which pots and utensil and buildings are made. Then he becomes nothing and goes to non-existence after a brief existence

If man would have ended into dust, it would have been better, but there is for him punishment for sins and rewards for vitures. he will be raised up again into a new world on the Resurrection Day and he will have to render accounts for all his cjeed which two angels had already recorded. They did not miss even a minor thing from recording. So how can be take pride ?
How can he take hoast ?

MEDICINE OF PRIDE BASED ON ACTIONS: The

medicine of pride based on action is to conduct oneself very humbly before the people and to follow the conduct of the humble and the modest. The Prophet said : I am only a servant. I take meal as a servant takes meal. Hazrat Salman Faresi was once asked : Why don't you put on new clothes ? He said "I am merely a slave. I would have put on new clothes had I had hope for a single day". Modesty does not become perfect without actions.
For this reason, those who took pride were ordered to have faith and to pray, as prayer is the pillar of religion, for therein there are secret talks with the Creator with humility and modesty. There is humility in prayer and the Arabs who were haughty were ordered to be humble through prayer. They did not bow down

VoI-HI Pride and self-praise 269

their heads to anybody, nor prostrate. So they were ordered to crush their pride by bowing and prostrating.

Second stage of pride: In this stage, one of the seven reasons mentioned above comes into light. We shall describe the treatment of these seven causes by a mixture of knowledge and action.

(1) Pride arising out of pedigree. If one take pride for pedigree, let him treat this disease of his heart after knowing two things. One of the two things is that he should know that he is getting respect not for his own quality but for that of another. For this reason, ascertain poet says:-

If you take pride of pedigree though itbe true, Think of what thing you have been created.